2025 year in review! ugh but yay?
It’s our “mini” writing-year-in-review!
We put that in quotes because… this is a lot longer than we thought it was.
If we’re bad at anything, it’s knowing how to slow down and do less.
But! That’s not what you’re here for, so… onward with our recap!
This year was so difficult on multiple fronts (politically, financially, bleh) but creatively it was amazing? All our writing work was the only thing keeping us sane, so thank goodness it kept us so busy.
Before we dive in, we want to note that we had weekly pre-production meetings for our short film, Long Away, every Friday from January through March! Those meetings aren’t listed below, but they were a good amount of work that had to be done every week.
Also there’d be too many dates to list all of these, but in between all of the below we were doing art, color, and lettering approvals on Star Trek Voyager: Homecoming, and on our upcoming YA queer trans romcom graphic novel (that should finally be announced early 2026), and occasionally approvals for our other graphic novel that’s slated for a 2027 release.
And we were also doing press and interviews for Star Trek Voyager: Homecoming before and after the project was officially announced, and are still doing some now. The back half of 2025 was especially filled with them!
January 6 – Asked by Heather Antos at IDW to pitch for Star Trek Voyager’s 30th anniversary comic!
January 7 – Turned in the first Star Trek comic pitch we’d been working with Heather on (status presently up in the air due to Paramount being sold to Skydance late in the year). This had nothing to do with Voyager and is a different concept entirely.
January 7 – Asked to pitch another Fallout adventure for the Modiphius ttrpg, but had to turn it down because we were too busy.
January 13 – Invited to be a part of Mad Cave’s LA Strong charity comic for LA fire victims.
January 22 – One of our Voyager pitches was picked up!
January 22 – We had a comic pitch loved by an editor, who took it to other editors at the publisher to get consensus.
January 22 – Brian May says yes to us using Queen song Long Away in our short?! License fee set unbelievably low. How how how?!?
February 5 – Signed Voyager comic contracts.
February 12 – The comic pitch from Jan. 22 is loved by the other editors, sent to executive for final approval. This was the same publisher with editors who’d loved five of our previous pitches, but the executives shot down all of them. So maybe you can see where this one is going…
February 12 – Voyager comic outline submitted for approval.
February 19 – Long Away Seed&Spark campaign launched.
March 6 – Outline for Voyager comic approved!
March 10 – Lilly Wachowski loves Long Away and gives us a blurb to help promote the crowdfund! Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat.
March 13 – Long Away zoom table read with cast.
March 14 – Visibility trans tabletop roleplaying game charity magazine for Trans Day of Visibility goes up for pre-order, Tilly has an essay in it about how often trans people experiment with gender first through ttrpgs.
March 17 – Star Trek Voyager: Homecoming limited series from IDW announced!
March 18 – First in-person rehearsal with the two leads of Long Away.
March 19 – LA Strong charity comic released.
March 21 – Long Away crowdfund finishes, reaching 148% of its goal!
March 31 – Long Away films at We Can Be Heroes in Chatsworth!
April 8 – Asked to pitch on concepts for a publisher’s New Adult comic line (basically a step between Young Adult and Adult).
April 13 – Picture lock on Long Away, on the tenth cut of the film.
April 18 – Turned in Voyager: Homecoming issue 1 script final draft (after doing revisions over the previous weeks).
April 25 – Executives at the comic company with our pitch pass on the sixth consecutive one, that all the editors loved. Sad trombone.
May 8 – VFX complete on Long Away.
May 12 – Turned in Voyager: Homecoming issue 2 script final (after doing revisions over the previous weeks).
May 21 – Finches prose story accepted into the Curiouser vol. 2 anthology.
May 25 – Long Away color correcting done.
May 27 – Final in-studio Long Away theater sound mix day.
May 29 – Turned in the New Adult pitch.
May 30 – Final Long Away DCP (digital cinema package) quality check. These are the files sent to theaters for screenings, and involved watching the full thing in a theater to check for any errors in the file (not for any last changes and tweaks, we crossed that Rubicon a ways back). We also personally delivered the DCP to the theater for our cast and crew screening, on a hard drive! Wild.
June 2 – Accepted into the Witching Season horror comic anthology.
June 4 – Cast & crew/friends & family/industry screening of Long Away at Lammele NoHo, with reception at Pitfire Pizza.
June 10 - Asked if we were available for a writing summit and freelance episode on a new animated show. Um, yes!
June 13 - Asked for a one page outline for the New Adult comic pitch!
June 16 – Turned in Voyager: Homecoming issue 3 script final (after doing revisions over the previous weeks).
June 17 – Signed animation freelance episode contracts.
July 3 – Writer summit to break our animation episode story.
July 10 – Attended DC Comics Superman movie screening on WB lot, thanked by name by Jim Lee before the movie along with all other DC talent who attended! Whaa.
July 11 – Turned in animated episode outline. Turned in Voyager: Homecoming issue 4 script final (after doing revisions over the previous weeks).
July 18 – Long Away screens at Brighton International Trans Film Festival in the UK! Technically our world premiere!
July 24-27 – San Diego Comic-Con, including appearances on the Trans Creators Take a Stand in Trying Times panel, the Out in Comics Year 38 Panel, the How to Get your 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Job in Entertainment panel, three book signings with PRISM comics, the Star Trek The Next Frontier IDW comics panel, and the IDW Star Trek comics signing (of the SDCC exclusive ashcan previewing three upcoming Trek comics). We also had half a dozen interviews and press to squeeze in for Star Trek Voyager: Homecoming.
August 4 – Turned in animated episode first draft.
August 4 – Pitches sent to another editor at another publisher.
August 13 – Pitches turned down, but editor asks if we have a horror pitch. We do! It’s sent.
August 14 – Pitches sent to another editor at yet another publisher.
August 23 – Sept 7 – Long Away is an official selection of the Seattle Film Festival and screens online!
August 27 – Asked to pitch for a comic’s 2026 Pride special issue. Turned in Voyager: Homecoming issue 5 script final (after doing revisions over the previous weeks).
September 3 – Asked for tweaks to Pride pitches, Voyager: Homecoming issue 1 releases.
September 6 – Long Away screens at the Long Beach QFilm Fest in Long Beach, California, and the FP Arts Short Film Festival, in Scotland, on the same day! The Long Beach screening is technically our US premiere!
September 12 – Sent to draft 2 on our animated episode, not many revisions or notes! Hell yeah.
September 15 – Long Away wins Best LGBTQ Short in the San Diego Movie Awards!
September 18 – Animated episode draft 2 turned in.
September 25 – Comic editor turns down our horror pitch (that we’d already revised twice, at her request).
September 28 – Signing at PRISM Comics booth and appeared on the What can dystopian sci-fi say about our dystopian present? panel at Los Angeles Comic Con.
October 1 – Monster High season 2 comes to Paramount+, now you can stream all six of our episodes, including the hourlong Halloween special Monster Fest that won a Velma award for representation in LGBTQIA+ children’s media! Curiouser and Curiouser vol. 2 launches on Kickstarter.
October 4 – Long Away screens at the Skate or Die Film Fest in Pennsylvania.
October 6 – Pride comic pitch selected by publisher.
October 8 – Pride comic contracts signed.
October 14 – Witching Season launches on Kickstarter.
October 17 – General meeting with an animation executive a writer friend introduced us to.
October 22 – Voyager: Homecoming issue 2 releases.
November 8 – Did a signing at Revenge Of Comics and Pinball’s Comic Creator Block Party.
November 11 – After a month of working on it, Tilly finished a book proposal for her second non-fiction book. It’s now with a book agent, hoping to hear back by spring.
November 12 – We were asked for three pitches from the animation executive we met.
November 19 – Tilly has an essay on James Gunn’s Superman film in Russ Burlingame’s zine about the film.
November 26 – Voyager: Homecoming issue 3 releases.
December 3 – After several revisions, the Pride comic script is final. The editor of our YA queer trans romcom graphic novel (who’s been with us since before we signed the contracts in March of 2024) is laid off from the publisher during “restructuring.” ☹
December 5 – New interim editor on the YA queer trans romcom asks us to reformat 160 pages of comic (of 200… but only 160 pages of art are done at this point) for lettering to meet different requirements. Note that those 160 comic pages are roughly 320ish pages of script.
December 8 – All reformatted script pages turned in.
December 11 – Meeting with animation executive to pitch three different projects. Seems to go very well! This was at Warner Bros., and as the company just sold to Netflix (maybe? Or maybe Paramount who won’t stop trying to take it over? Who knows!) so she doesn’t know what their new mandates for projects will be, but will get back to us in the new year once things settle.
December 15 – Long Away is an official selection of the Hollywood Independent Filmmaker Awards & Festival, and wins the Silver Award in both the LGBTQ+ Narrative Short and Sci-Fi Narrative Short categories!
And here’s a quick note just to say all of that combined wasn’t remotely enough to pay our bills. It should be! But it sure isn’t. And that’s messed up.
During all of this Tilly took up roller derby and participated in an exhibition bout to raise money for a trans charity, and Susan volunteered for a dog rescue (and did fun little drawings of pets to raise over $1000 for them!). Tilly wrote and released forty-five Trans Tuesday essays and podcast episodes, totaling over 125k words and 32 hours of podcast runtime!
‘k, we’re gonna try and rest for a few weeks now (lol).
Stay safe. Support and protect each other.
Fight the fascists.
All our love!
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